'Conservative' string attached to $50 million college gift

FAIRFAX, VA. — A $50 million gift made earlier this year to Virginia’s largest public university was given specifically to “promote the conservative principles of governance,” newly released documents show, raising concerns from critics that it compromises academic freedom at the school.

George Mason University announced the gift earlier this year — the largest ever received in the school’s history — from the estate of Allison and Dorothy Rouse to Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

Documents obtained by the group UnKoch My Campus under the Freedom of Information Act and made public this week show that the Rouse trust specified its bequest be used “as an endowment to fund a chair or chairs that will promote the conservative principles of governance, statesmanship, high morals, civil and religious freedom and the study of the United States Constitution.”Source Wtop